Conclusion

The ESSER experience was extremely unusual for school district administrators. This is obviously true in the sense that the COVID-19 pandemic was an exceptional, and exceptionally harrowing, time for public schools and their communities, but it is true in another way as well: This isn’t usually how we do school funding. The ESSER allocations differed from the norm not only in their emergency purpose, but in their large size, their time limitations, their simultaneous funding of many districts at a time when other government agencies were also receiving aid, and their relative—though not total—flexibility. ESSER spending has occurred in a chaotic context, and there has been little opportunity for reflection. With approximately one year remaining in the ESSER timeline, lawmakers are already proposing significant changes to school funding policy based on an incomplete assessment of the ESSER experience. For the sake of students, now is the time to consider what we can learn about this funding, and about the best way to allocate similar school funding in the future.